


Impact

by howardently



Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 21:21:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4580577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howardently/pseuds/howardently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt about Rae being in a car crash and Finn worrying about her</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impact

It’s almost like she can sense him, like she somehow knows he’s in the building even before he comes around the corner and she can see his worried face. She’s already holding up her hands when he enters the room.

“I’m okay.” She protests, anticipating what he’ll say.

“Jesus, Rae.” He says as soon as he sees her. Finn crosses the room in three strides and sits on the edge of her bed to bend over and hug her carefully.

“I’m okay.” She repeats, wrapping her arm around his back, levering up into his embrace. She closes her eyes for a moment; he smells like sweat and dust and his cologne, and she realizes for the first time how scared she’s been all afternoon when her head spins with relief.

He pulls back, a hand gripping either shoulder to gently push her back down to the bed. Then he touches her face, pushes her hair back and cups her cheeks in his hands. He looks at her then, scans her face slowly and then looks into her eyes like he’s trying to make sure she’s still her. She can feel tears prickling, but she swallows and blinks. She’s got to be tough here, because he looks anything but. He tilts her head into one of his hands and carefully traces the bruising down from her forehead to her jaw and along her neck. He makes a soft hissing noise.

“Jesus. How far down does this go?” He tugs at the collar of her hospital gown, exhaling roughly when he sees the mottled skin. He unsnaps the shoulder and peels it down, ignoring her noise of protest. His fingers are cool and gentle as they move over her bare skin and she shivers. Finn makes another noise, a whimper-grunt, so she reaches up to take his hands in hers.

“I’m okay.” She repeats forcefully, squeezing his hands and meeting his eyes. He stares unblinking for a long moment and she tightens her grip on his fingers when she sees his eyes moving over the bruises again. Eventually he nods, barely, but he nods. She exhales and releases his fingers, looks to see that they’ve turned white in her hands.

Finn puts her face in his hands again, fingers tangling in her hair and bends to press a kiss to her forehead. She can hear the shakiness of his breath. His lips linger, and when he pulls away, he doesn’t meet her gaze, just refastens the snaps on her shoulder.

“What happened?” He asks, shifting on the bed and taking her hand, thumb rubbing along the delicate skin at her wrist. “They said it was a car accident, but you don’t even drive.”

Rae sighs, watches the restless movement of his fingers. “I was with Jeff.”

“Rae.” He groans, and she rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “I told you not to drive with him. I told you it wasn’t safe.”

“Yeah, I know.” She snaps, pulling her hand away. “I know what you told me. Do you really think this is the time, Finn? Can’t we play ‘I told you so’ later?” She turns her head, stubbornly stares at the blinds covering the window. She wonders if it’s a law or something that hospitals be dull and gray.

“I’m sorry.” Finn says after a minute, placing a hand on her blanket-covered thigh. She doesn’t turn. She tells herself she gets to be a pain right now; she’s the one in the bleeding hospital. “Hey.” He shakes her thigh gently and she turns to look at him reluctantly, eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry, alright? I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just… Is Jeff okay?”

“Yeah.” She grumps, softening. He looks so distraught, it’s hard to stay angry, even when she knows the next part of the story will cause the same reaction. “It was me that got the brunt of it. The collision was on the passenger side and my airbag went off and I slammed my head into it. That’s why I’m all banged up.” She watches him process the information, can practically see him imagining the scenario. He winces. “I’m okay, though.” She reminds him.

Finn shakes his head. “You’re not though, are you? You wouldn’t be in the bloody hospital if you were okay.”

“I am!” She protests quickly. His hands are shaking. “The doctor said I’ve got a concussion,” Finn makes a strangled noise and raises his eyes to the ceiling, “and that they’re really common and not serious. They just have to keep me overnight to watch it and make sure the treatment works. I’ll be right as rain in a day or two.”

“A concussion?” He asks, and somehow the pain wrinkling his features makes the aches from her bruises just a little worse. They’ve got her on painkillers, but Finn can’t have any, and she can’t stand seeing the hurt in his eyes. “Fuck. I had one of those from footie back in college, they can seriously fuck you up.”

“I’m fine though, okay? Don’t worry.” She pleads, tilting her neck to meet his eyes. She’s learned that if she makes her eyes go wide and guileless, he’ll give in. She tries it now, as best she can, but the painkillers and the stress have made her a little bit loose and she’s not sure it’s effective.

He shakes his head, sighs. She bites back a smile.

Suddenly, he bends to wrap her up in a surprisingly fierce hug, eliciting a little squeak from her. He buries his face in her neck; she can feel that the trembling is in more than just his hands. She rubs her hand down along the smooth plane of his back, makes soft shushing noises into his ear. He nuzzles his nose against her neck; she rubs her cheek against the top of his head.

“You could’ve died.” He moans, barely audible with his face pressed into her hair.

“Oh, babe.” She coos, tightening her arm around him, then pushing him back to look at his face. She puts her hand on his cheek, runs her thumb along his stubble. He grips her hand, pushes himself into her touch. “I’m alright. I got lucky, really. It could have been much worse.”

Finn groans, but he’s chuckling a little too as he closes his eyes and drops their hands to his lap. “You think that makes it any better?”

“Dunno.” She retorts through a smile. “How about this, then? We’re all dying. We could all die at any moment. I could have an aneurism and drop dead at any moment. So there’s nothing particularly special about this one then, is there? I could always have died.”

He tries for a grimace, but it’s lost to incredulous amusement before long. “You’re awful, do you know that?”

“Yeah, but you still love me, don’t you?” She laughs.

His face softens, and he squeezes her hand in one of his. He nods. “I love you.”

“Could you give me a kiss, then? It’s been kind of a shit day.” Rae smiles at their tangled fingers, then up at Finn once more. He shakes his head and rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling.

“S’pose.” He grumbles, then bends to slide his lips over hers. It’s a careful kiss, she can feel his reservation and hesitance. She lifts up and presses in further, wanting to deepen it, pour some of her fear and anxiety and relief into him. But he pulls back with an apologetic smile, and her head aches from the movement, so she doesn’t protest.

Actually, she’s starting to ache kind of a lot, all over the place. She fights against wincing, about letting on that she’s hurting. But he’s Finn, and he’s back to running his eyes over her face like she’s an oasis in the desert, so he sees. He raises an eyebrow and Rae can’t hide the wince as she tries to shrug.

“You’re hurting.” He says, and it’s not a question, so she doesn’t feel the need to reply. “Let’s call the nurse and get you some more medicine.”

Rae starts a feeble objection, but he’s already reached over and pushed the call button. She scowls at him. Finn slips off the bed and tugs a chair across the tile floor until it’s next to her. He slumps into it, and even through her irritation, she smiles at the way he spreads his legs out in front of him. A few minutes later, a nurse bustles in with a clipboard and injects a vial of yellow liquid into the IV in Rae’s arm. Finn watches on, face an interesting combination of satisfaction and worry. Rae sticks her tongue out at him.

It only takes a few minutes before she starts feeling cloudy and sleepy. “Finn?” She asks, and he sits up straighter and holds her hand again. She laughs a little at this, they don’t normally hold hands half so much. It amuses her greatly that hospitals are places for hand-holding. “You know?”

“I know what, Rae?”

“No, I mean, like, you know, right?” She giggles, understanding that she’s not making much sense out loud, even though it makes perfect sense in her head. She’s trying to tell him she loves him, that she’s grateful he’s here, that his worry for her means so much to her. But these thoughts are too complicated for the words she’s got at hand right now. She tries for a simpler sentence. “I like you.” She sighs and shoots him a sleepy grin.

“I like you too, Rae. You get some rest, okay love?” He says, smiling and patting her hand and turning to sit more comfortably in her chair. “I’ll just…” He looks around the room and picks up an old fishing magazine that’s sitting on her bedside table. “Read for a while, yeah? You get some sleep and I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Rae rolls her eyes, scoffs. This is something she can manage even with the swirls of tiredness that are rolling around in her head. “You can watch the telly. I won’t notice.” Through the thickness in her head, an important though occurs to Rae and she tries to get it out. “Oh, call Archie. Yeah? Supposed to have drinks, but no…”

Rae closes her eyes, but she can feel Finn moving beside her, feel him drop another soft kiss to her forehead. She can’t be sure, but she thinks he says  _‘course_ , like he always does when she asks him for something. And then the eddies finally swirl up and pull her under, into the fog and into heavy dreams weighed down by the medicine.

—

“Finn?” She asks when she wakes some time later. It’s dark and she can barely see that he’s moved to a recliner in the corner of the room from the faint blue glow from the telly. “What time is it?”

“Hey.” He replies around a yawn, sitting up and stretching hugely, his hand above his head still clutching the remote. He smiles as he moves back to the chair beside her bed. “Um, it’s late. After midnight.”

“What are you still doing here?” She yawns, shoots him a grin when she sees his furrowed forehead. “I would’ve thought they’d make you go home. You should have gone home.”

“Oh, yeah, they tried to. I had to bribe the night nurse so she’d let me stay.” He folds his body over so that his crossed arms rest on the mattress at her side. She reaches to ruffle his hair.

“Did you have to flash her your boobs?” She teases.

“Well, if I did, I certainly wouldn’t be telling you, now would I?”

Rae laughs, and then a soft silence falls between them. “You should have gone home, gotten some rest.”

“I wanted to be here when you woke up.” Finn shrugs, like it wasn’t even an option, like of course his discomfort is to be preferred to hers. She smiles and pats the bed.

“C’mon then.” He shakes his head in confusion and she moves to make sure there’s room for him. “Get up here.”

He crawls into the narrow bed with her. She shifts to her side, it’s not really big enough for the two of them, but she’s still a thousand times more comfortable with his body pressed up against hers, his arm slung over her hip. She reaches a tentative hand to touch the hollows under his eyes.

“You okay?” She asks, letting her eyes and her fingers examine his face like he’d done to her only a couple of hours ago.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” He grumbles, but it’s soft like whispers. She shivers. “You’re the one in a hospital bed.”

“Technically, you’re in a hospital bed too, you know. So I’ll repeat: are you okay?”

Finn stares at her for a few minutes in the darkness of the room. It’s quiet everywhere, not even a machine beeping somewhere to break the stillness. He sighs.

“You could’ve died.”

“Finn…”

“No, Rae. You could’ve died today. I’m just…” He stares up at the ceiling for a long minute, and she knows that he’s carefully choosing his words, that what he says next will be something important. “It’s not enough time.”

She furrows her brow. “I got knocked in the head pretty good today, love. You’re going to have to walk me through what you’re saying.”

His fingers grip the hospital gown over her hip briefly, but he releases almost before she’s noticed it. “It’s not enough time with you. When Nan died, we knew it was coming, and she’d had a good, long life. And it was still… hard, really hard. But you… Rae, we just got back together. I need more time.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

He touches her cheeks, runs his hand down the back of her head. “I just got scared is all.” He smiles grimly. “I couldn’t stand to lose you now. I want so much more time with you. A hundred more years, at least.”

“At least?” She smiles, and he lets his thumb rest on the corner of her mouth.

“I’d take two hundred, if I could get them.”

Rae shifts as best she can in the awkward confines of the too-small bed, until her head is resting on his chest the way she likes. His heartbeat is steady and makes her feel warm and safe and like things are just as they should be. She rubs her face against his t-shirt for a minute, like she’s furrowing a soft spot for her head. He strokes his hand along her hair in smooth, steady, measured movements. It’s just when she starts to drift off again that he says it.

“Let’s get married.”

They both freeze for a moment, Rae’s stiff body going even tenser. His hand hovers briefly just above her head before he deliberately returns to petting her. She can feel his tension in the movement; his strokes are no longer smooth and fluid. She forces herself to relax her muscles slowly, a bit at a time, but she’s still clutching him tightly when she finally cranes her neck up to look at him.

“What?” She whispers, thinking that if they’re really quiet, maybe this conversation won’t have happened in the morning.

Finn looks down, and she can feel him examining her expression. She tries to stay carefully blank, to keep the panic that’s pulsing in her throat from showing on her face. She wonders if he can feel her heartbeat through her ribs, if it’s going to be obvious to him what’s going on inside of her. He always seems to know, even when he doesn’t say much.

“I meant what I said earlier.” He says finally, pushing a strand of hair off of her face. “I want so many more years with you, Rae. All of them, all my years. So, let’s get married. Let’s lock down that time together.”

He shrugs slightly, and it’s her turn to examine his expression carefully. He looks anxious and a little bit hopeful. She shakes her head, eyebrows drawing in.

“Getting married doesn’t lock anything down, you know that. Look at your parents. Look at my parents.”

Finn’s answering protest is quick, but hushed. “Yeah, but that’s not the same as us. We always come back together. We’re really in love.”

“They might have been too, you don’t know. Besides, we’re too young to get married.” She turns her head to nuzzle her face into his chest and curls her arms around him more tightly; he’s always been good about intuiting the language of their bodies, she hopes he understands what she’s trying to tell him.

“No we’re not.  Loads of kids from college have gotten married already. You’re finished with Uni. We’re not too young.” He says firmly, tugging her up to the pillow beside him, his face only millimeters from hers. She loves looking at him like this, seeing each of his individual freckles and eyelashes, the bristly hairs of his scowling eyebrows. “Let’s just do it. I want to be your family, Rae. I want to not have to negotiate with the nurse about staying with you. I want to be the person who gets called when something happens.”

“You were!” She laughs, and tugs on his lip when he pouts.

“I love you.” He says seriously, and her laughter dies out. “So what if we’re young and our parents both had failed marriages? I love you and… I know. I know. So, let’s get married.”

He ends his speech with a grin, one of those winning Finn Nelson smiles that have historically worked so well for him. And, she considers for half a minute. She thinks about getting to look at his eyebrows up close every day for forever, about owning those knicker-dropping grins. But her answer stays the same, has to stay the same.

“No.”

She makes it as gentle as possible, tries to soften the words with kind eyes and her hand on his arm. Finn looks down and nods, swallowing heavily. She watches his Adam’s apple move.  Everything is silent for a few long moments. He doesn’t touch her, his hands lie between them sadly, despite the too-small bed. He sighs, a long drawn out exhale, and she thinks maybe he’s trying to hide his disappointment, that maybe he really did want to marry her. The thought is stunning, sobering, frightening.

“Hey.” She calls, moving to lift his chin. His eyes are bottomless when they meet hers. “That’s not never, okay? I love you too. I’m not saying never. Just… not now. Not in reaction to this. Not when we’ve only just gotten back together this year. Just… no for now.”

He’s still for a long second, then he licks his bottom lip slowly, pulling it between his teeth. And then… then he smiles wider than she’s ever seen before. Her heart starts to pound in her chest. He grins at her, beams even, and then leans in to give her a searing kiss.

“I can live with that,” he mumbles against her lips, “for now.”


End file.
